


wonder when it's my turn

by starbreather



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Self-Harm, TW-Suicidal ideation and self-harm, even if it seems hopeless now- you will get better, keep working on it and trying your best, plz don't read this if it's triggering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 11:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbreather/pseuds/starbreather
Summary: Now, thrown back into his past, Klaus finds another coping mechanism other than drinking. This time around, his siblings decide to help.





	wonder when it's my turn

**Author's Note:**

> TW- Suicidal ideation and self-harm  
> Don't read this if you think it will trigger you!!!!

Klaus thought that maybe he’d been born with a fear of the dead. He wasn’t sure if it came as an innate part of his powers but he always remembered seeing skulls, seeing the dead and shaking in response.

After the theater incident, he knew there was more to his powers than he’d lead into thinking. He could use ghost’s physical forms. He knew it even if his siblings didn’t.

He’d spent so much of his life drunk, so much of it addicted to substances, and he knew that he had been running away. His siblings thought that he was just a junkie, but they had never lived with fear as he had. Their powers didn’t affect their psyche, not like Klaus. He longed to have Luther’s power, or maybe Diego's. Really any power other than his own. (God, forbid he had Vanya’s though. She was an exception to his desire.) 

So now that they had traveled back in time to when they were kids, Klaus thought about his options. His Dad wouldn’t let him drink away his problems, and Klaus knew that he when he had seen his Dad in the afterlife that he had been right. 

He had only scraped the surface of his powers.

 

They were having family dinner. The first one since getting back. All of the Hargreeves were trying to keep calm as they were thrown into a past they never wanted to revisit. 

Klaus wanted to break the silence, to light the air with the light-hearted humor he knew that he knew he was full of, but he wasn’t willing to face the punishment of speaking out of turn. 

“Number Four,” Hargreeves said, snapping his son to attention. 

“Yes, daddy dearest.” 

“You’ll be having some extra training with me after dinner. Get over that pathetic fear of yours.”

 

Fear coursed through him. “Good offer,but no thanks. I’ll pass.” 

His father fixed him a glare, but he still wasn’t silenced. 

“I can’t do it.”

He felt his siblings eyes on him, knew they wanted to protect him, but they were powerless against their father. 

 

“I’m trying to bring out your true potential, Four. You’ve barely begun to come into your powers.” His tone left no room for argument and Klaus knew that his fate was sealed. 

The mausoleum. 

 

Klaus had spent long hours in the dark, long hours in the mausoleum where he would stay with the spirits. With people begging for the help he didn’t know how to provide. 

His father had dragged him to the dreaded place and left him there to ‘overcome his fear’. The truth was Klaus wished that he could be done with being scared, he’d rather be numb. 

He’d rather be drunk or high or dissociated. Anywhere but here. 

Curled into himself on the side of the wall, cold seeped into his skin, soaking through his shirt and coat. It was damp and heavy and kept him grounded in a reality that he wished to leave.

Voices screamed around him and fear threatened to swallow him whole, but he knew that he continued to scream, scream until his voice was hoarse and raw and he could barely feel anything except the pain of it. 

He closed his eyes and waited for it to pass. 

At least after Ben died he’d had someone comforting around him all the time. It was strange, having someone who didn’t give up on him. 

Klaus’ best friend was Ben, but they hadn’t been that way until Ben had died, until he’d been forced to be with Klaus if he wanted to have a connection to his family. A connection to the world at all. Something selfish inside of Klaus cherished it. 

Voices still swirled around his head and he longed for them to stop, but then he understood. He understood that he deserved this pain. Thinking hard to himself, he focussed on his sadness, on the pain and suffering. He didn’t know why he wanted to drown in his feeling but as they got stronger so did the presence of the spirits. 

Hands reached out towards him and took physical form. Klaus gasped as he felt skin brush his. The last physical touch he had was his dad’s clenched hands on the back of his neck, propelling him forwards as he fought walking. Ghosts had sharps nails, had teeth that longed to reach out to him. If not to bite him, then to gnash together and beg for help, to convey their loss and longing. It made Klaus sick. 

He didn’t realise that nails had broken his skin until he felt relief, felt himself come back to life.  
Maybe, he thought, the only thing separating him from the things he saw was that he could bleed. 

His dad was proud when Klaus came out of the mausoleum with thin trails of blood running down his arms, with tears through his thick jacket. 

“We’re finally getting somewhere.” he would say, voice full of pride that made Klaus’ stomach twist. 

Klaus pressed his fingers into the wound and relished as a rush of pain came, followed by a brief burst of joy. The fingers he rubbed together were slick with blood and Klaus felt his lips quirk into something that wasn’t quite a smile. 

At least he felt something other than sad. 

 

It was a month before he ran out of space on his thighs to cut. Then he moved to his shoulders, hidden by shirts, but eventually all he had left was his arms and honestly he couldn’t help but think that maybe it didn’t matter. One day he’s be gone, he’d be with Dave. He’d be happier once he died. Heaven had to be better. 

Eventually when he started to self-harm on his arms, he had run out of energy to give a fick about anyone’s stares or gawks. This was of course until Luther decided that he was in charge of everyone. 

“Klaus,” his brother said in a firm voice, “we need to discuss what’s going on with you.” 

Klaus looked around. He was seated on his bed, with all of his siblings shoved into the space. They couldn’t see that the room was even more crowded, filled with spirits that screamed for his help. God he hated being sober. 

He could tell that Luther was uncomfortable with the situation but the leader inside of him screamed for control. Klaus wondered how his brother would have turned out if he hadn’t been deemed Number One at the start of his life. 

Klaus shifted uncomfortably in his place on his bed. All of his siblings stares weighed on him, he felt like he wanted to disappear, suddenly longing for Five’s power.

“Whatever do you mean, brother?” he asked and felt the itch of his skin on his wrist. He only had a few cuts there but he knew it was enough to get his sibling’s attention. 

“Klaus.” This was Alison, her voice wavering with sadness, panging with desperation. “Don’t play dumb. 

Something hot crawled into Klaus’ throat, the same heat burning behind his eyes. He knew they’d figured out and inside he had wanted them to care, but now he didn’t know what he wanted. He sure as hell didn’t want Luther breathing down his neck about how he needed to stop hurting himself.

He curled fingers in, digging them into the soft skin of his palm. Sudden relief blurred his senses, and know he felt like he could deal with the situation. He felt strong only when he was bleeding. 

Bare feet pressed into the soft carpet of his bedroom as he stood up from his bed and a smile emerged on his face easily. 

“I’ve got it under control.” 

Vanya stood in the doorway with her head down, but Five no problem with confrontation. He simply quirked his eyebrows and said, “Your arms beg to differ.” 

Klaus look down, traced the scars decorating the soft, pale skin of his forearms. He knew he had a problem, he was running out of room on one side of his arm, with marks going down to his elbow. 

He sighed. “I know,” he replied, sounding decidedly not like Klaus. 

A hand pressed into his arm, in the same place his fingers traced his ugly marks. Klaus looked up and saw his brother, the one whose room Klaus had always known to get knives from. 

“Let us help you,” Diego croaked, there was a vulnerability that he’s never seen in his brother before on those four words. 

Fear climbed through Klaus’s body, finding its home in his chest, letting him feel crushed under the emotion’s weight. This Klaus thought is what dying feel like. It didn’t compare to all the times he’s overdosed for the thrill. He’d never wanted to die then. Now, however, he could feel the overwhelming need to be gone, to be like all the ghosts he saw and disappear. 

How he wanted to leave. 

Klaus finally broke. He fell into Diego, letting him depend on his embrace to keep him upright. Sobs drew through his body and he felt the air tighten. He knew Vanya was trying to keep from being upset and setting something off, to settle her fears, her sadness, but everyone else in the room looked at him with soft eyes, with concern, with love. 

A pathetic thing to feel love for, Klaus thought. Love for a cutter.

When the sobs had subsided, he found himself surrounded by family on the floor of his room. They all sat in a circle, spread out across the room, some on the bed, some on the floor, and Klaus began to speak. 

“I want it to be quiet.” He whispered. 

Luther’s face crinkled in confusion. “Quiet?” 

“The ghosts.” Five was the next one to speak, his tone not quite concerned. 

Klaus rested his head on his drawn up knees. “They’re always so loud. So persistent. So lonely. I wanted to be in control of something in my life, just one thing, and now I’m gonna lose that too.”

“Hurting yourself shouldn’t be the only thing that makes you feel… okay.” Vanya said, voice soft and suddenly calming. “We’ll figure a way for you to get better. To be in control.”

His head shook bad and forth rapidly. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. It’s never going to stop.”

“You can learn to control them,” Ben spoke with certainty, with a hope that Klaus couldn’t fulfill. “We- we found a really good program for you to enroll in. It’s, uh, it’s like rehab but for depression and anxiety and stuff.” 

Klaus looked up at this. “I’m not going to brain rehab.” 

Five rolled his eyes. “You start tomorrow,” he said. “It’s the beginning of the rest of your life.”


End file.
